My emotional deficits

This blog is yet another piece to the jigsaw on my disability and a lot of workings out. I am more emotionally disabled than I am physically, due to the nature of the damage to my Cerebral Cortex.

The Cerebral Cortex controls both motor function and emotions and in my case my motors skills and physical disability are relatively minor, but the main issues revolve around my inability to physically feel.

When it comes to any disability, there is no easy way to deal with it. Where one person struggles, another person with similar symptoms may not, but our perceptions and the nature of having a disability is hard. I don’t think one element is harder than another, just different, with the different issues we have to deal with.

I talk about my intuition a lot, because that has become my compensatory tool. I use my intuition to talk about my emotions and to anticipate how others might feel. I use my intuition to read other people’s emotions and manage my thoughts constructively. I say thoughts, rather than feelings, because that is what they are. They’re just thoughts. I don’t feel those thoughts.

To feel is to physically feel and all that physically feeling entails, but the damage to my Cerebral Cortex is too extensive for me to emotionally feel. Sadly, they don’t. Another problem for those like me with emotional difficulties, is that it’s easy to stay locked away in our own little world. Luckily, my intuition acts as my guide, so I don’t have.

I continually choose to adapt, to try to find acceptance on everything I deal with all that is documented on my blog. Emotionally, life becomes harder for me when I don’t.

I’ve still got to fit into my life, as others must continually try to fit into mine, even with my constraints. I can’t change that.

Thanks Tim. Out of all my blogs, this has been the most difficult one for me to write.

I can empathise because I know what it is to struggle and understand compassion, because I didn’t have compassion given to me as a child.

What I’m struggling with here, wouldn’t be something that’s easily understood. But it does makes sense that the part of my brain that deals with feelings and emotions is damaged and therefore I have an impairment there.

I have learned how to ‘blow breath into the depth of my emotions’ and am able to empathise and provide deep support through my heightened senses. They enable me to feel the heart and pulse of my readers. I love that I can.

I tend to reconcile that if the Cerebral Cortex wasn’t damaged in this way, I would most likely be more disabled physically.

Yes, this blog was enormously difficult for me to write, you’re right and it was the most important in terms of me understanding what I deal with.

I originally found a quote about disability that reinforced what I felt that helped me put this blog into context. It took me a longer to write this blog, because I was concerned about other people’s thoughts and perceptions of what I deal with.

Over the years through my spiritual teachings and intuition, I have come to understand how other people must feel and so I utilise those observations, through my writing and both of those help me compensate for my lack of feelings.

I know that if my emotional feelings weren’t comprised, I would feel what others feel, but that I would still write in the same way. I’ve just found a different way to compensate and be.

wow! Just wow! Great blog Ilana. My dad and I were talking about my disability and I broke down crying, telling him I feel like I’ve let him and my mom down. I’ve failed my kids, my husband. I told him I felt him and my mom wasted their time keeping me alive and fighting the doctors, when they were happy to let me go.

I was heartbroken telling him this. I told him I can’t live up to their expectations including societies. He said he was sorry and couldn’t believe I felt this way. Everyone expects me to go to work, when it’s apparent I can’t stand on my feet for 10 minutes or less. Very frustrating and depressing.

But I have to accept that not every one will see my side and what we as a community struggle with. Since I’m not in a wheelchair or walker (yet) every one thinks and expects us to have the ability to do what they all can do and it’s so wrong and discriminating.

He said he noticed I’m ‘failing’ physically and don’t have the stamina I used to have a year ago. After doing research on MD, I’ve read the person who has it, will find themselves being unable to do what they could do a year before, so it makes sense to me.

Aww thanks Bonnie. You haven’t let anyone down. I can’t stress that enough. You didn’t ask to be born let alone be born with a disability that you had no control over, in the same way I had no control over my disability.

This is not your issue to carry. As far as society is concerned, it doesn’t make society right, or matter what they think. Society and people will always have their opinions of us. There will also always be expectations placed upon us, but you’re exempt because you’re different. You can’t be expected to conform because of what you deal with. The pressure is off.

I think if you ask your parents, they will tell you, you are the best thing they’ve ever done, particularly as they could have lost you, but have gained so much with you being in their lives. You have an amazing spirit, given your disability and what you deal with; with a determination to match and succeed in your own way. Their lives would be less rich without you in it.

As for yourself Bonnie, perhaps it’s time to start seeing yourself differently. You’re as good as the next and don’t let anyone tell you otherwise. Please don’t let others make how other see you, about you.